Veteran Crawford’s vote against VA fundingIn 1988, U.S. Rep. Rick Crawford was an Army bomb technician serving in Pakistan. It was his job to keep things from exploding. On July 30, he played with a little fire. Crawford, a Republican who represents Eastern Arkansas 1st District, was one of only five U.S. House members voting against a bill providing $10 billion for private providers to serve veterans when the VA system is overloaded. The bill also made it possible for senior executiv...

Mom’s fineAugust has been a challenging month for my family the last few years. Two years ago, while my children, Maggie and Robert, and I were visiting my sister, Kathy, and her husband, Paul, in Key Biscayne, Florida, our mother ended up in the hospital in critical condition. While she recovered temporarily, she ultimately suffered a stroke right when school started in the fall of 2012. She spent the next year in a nursing home close to our home in At...

Is thinking obsolete?Some have said that we are living in a post-industrial era, while others have said that we are living in a post-racial era. But growing evidence suggests that we are living in a post-thinking era. Many people in Europe and the Western Hemisphere are staging angry protests against Israel’s military action in Gaza. One of the talking points against Israel is that far more Palestinian civilians have been killed by Israeli military attacks than th...

College grads needed, but cost keeps climbingArkansas has had a slight setback in its attempt to produce more citizens with 4-year college degrees, a goal established by Gov. Mike Beebe in 2011, when he called for doubling the number of degree holders by 2025. The state Department of Higher Education reported recently that the 6-year graduation rate for first-time students enrolled in state-supported universities dropped back below the 40 percent level — from a high point of 40.8 percent...

New post shows Arkansas as battlegroundLITTLE ROCK — With the hiring of a state director for the first time in Arkansas, the Human Rights Campaign has highlighted how much of a battleground the state has become in the fight over equal rights for gays and lesbians. So far, however, gay rights advocates have seen more victories in courtrooms than in voting booths or legislative chambers. The nation’s largest lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender civil rights group announced last wee...

Veterans and Israel do well in CongressWASHINGTON — In more than five years in Congress, Republican Rep. John Fleming of Louisiana recalls voting only once for emergency spending that raised the federal deficit. That was last week, on a bill to improve health care for veterans, and it helps explain the lineup of winners and losers in the hours before Congress began a five-week break from the Capitol. Veterans, Israelis and governors and local officials who want their highway money ...

‘Freaked’ man steals trash truckA man accused of stealing a garbage truck in Boulder last week may have been scared by officers responding to an unrelated call near his home. The Daily Camera reported a neighbor told police Daniel Morkert, 26, got “freaked” when officers arrived in the area Wednesday afternoon. According to the police report, Morkert came out of his apartment building with his pit bull and asked an officer if he could borrow his car. The officer assumed he w...

This is your brain on Candy CrushRight now, someone you know is playing Candy Crush Saga on their phone. They’re swiping like-colored candies together, sending out Facebook requests and spending real-life money on extra lives. “Sweet,” the game tells them when they’ve made a particularly effective move. The game is free to download, yet makes an estimated $800,000 daily. It certainly is “sweet” for the developers of the game, King Digital Entertainment, but I’m calling shenan...

The market v. supply economics debate in capitalismIn democratic regulated capitalism, it takes a compromise of market-side (bubble-up) and supply-side (trickle-down) economics to create a viable economic system. Putting more money in the hands of people (especially in the lower 50 percent economically who spend a large percentage of their income on consumer goods) stimulates the economy by increasing consumer buying. This latter procedure can be accomplished through graduated taxes, which sup...

Our nation’s Christian heritageIt has been said our “heritage” is made up of all the positive past values that hold a civilization together. This is so true. It is with this thought in mind that I would like to pass along some information that many people in our nation do not know or truly understand. What I am referring to here is our nation’s Christian heritage. Our very roots came from our forefathers who made no apology for their faith in God, and the vast majority had ...

WWI, the not so great warNEWBURY, England — World War I began as most wars do with patriotic fervor and predictions of a quick end. It lasted four years. While the match igniting the “war to end all wars” was lit by the assassination of Austria’s Archduke Ferdinand on June 28, 1914, formal declarations of war occurred 100 years ago on July 28 (Austria declares war on Serbia) and Aug. 1 (Germany declares war on Russia, and Russia on Germany). Aug. 1, 1914 will be comme...

Perhaps we should cease the cease-firesMany years ago, on my first trip around the world, I was struck by how the children in the Middle East — Arab and Israeli alike — were among the nicest looking little children I had seen anywhere. It was painful to think that they were going to grow up killing each other. But that is exactly what happened. It is understandable that today many people in many lands just want the fighting between the Israelis and the Palestinians to stop. Calls f...

Future hope for Republicans in wisdom from the pastAs I wrote in last week’s column about Georgia’s U.S. Senate race between Democrat Michelle Nunn and Republican David Perdue, it will all boil down to turnout — who turns out to vote. While the Republican candidates are being fair when they tie the Democratic nominee to the Obama administration, they must do more than hope that Democrats can’t persuade voters to go to the polls. The Republican candidates need to create and communicate a clear,...

Keep the Natural State naturalPeople live in the country because they want the views, the quiet, the pristine land, to be active outside and healthy. Clean Line Energy’s proposed monstrously tall and wide towers with leveled naked ground surrounding them as well as the noisy hum, radio frequency interference, corona effects, electromagnetic interference and the magnetic and electric fields destroy the reason people choose to settle in the Arkansas countryside. Our national...

Welcome to America, kids — eventuallyThe question of what to do with these 50,000 Central American children sent to America alone by their parents to escape violence and poverty in their homelands — that’s a tough one. What do we do? Let some of them stay? Send them all home? Eventually, we’ll be asking young immigrants to come. We will do that because the decisions we have made, politically and personally, will leave us with no better choice. Let’s look at some statistics to see...

Congress offers only a patch to road fund shortfallThe Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department is working to pave the last gravel state highway. It’s an 8-mile stretch of road that runs north from Crawford County into Washington County in Northwest Arkansas. Actually, Arkansas 220 was originally owned by the U.S. Forest Service, but the state took over ownership and maintenance in 1998, according to a recent Arkansas Democrat-Gazette article. The department had completed a program in 19...

Tough road for ethics, term limits itemLITTLE ROCK — Referred to voters with overwhelming support from both chambers of the Republican-led Legislature last year, a proposal to restrict lobbyists’ gifts to lawmakers and loosen Arkansas’ term limits was touted as a compromise way to put major ethics reforms on the November ballot. But compromise could be the unraveling of the proposed constitutional amendment, which is facing growing opposition focused primarily on its term limits pr...

The facts about the Crow Mountain Fire DepartmentI am a volunteer firefighter with the Crow Mountain Fire Department and a member of the board for the Crow Mountain Fire Protection District. I would like to address the allegations David Ivy has made against the board members of the Crow Mountain Fire Protection District. In the early 1980s, the residents of the Crow Mountain Fire District voted to establish a fire protection district. In 2012, we consulted attorney Jim Coutts to see what we ...

The power of the InternetWhen I was a kid I loved “Weird Al” Yankovic, but if you had told me 20 years in the future Yankovic would still be relevant, while many of the artists he became famous for parodying were not, I’d have said you were crazy. Yankovic’s new album “Mandatory Fun” reached the No.1 spot on U.S. Billboard chart, following a week-long online music video campaign. Yankovic released a new video every day for eight days. The album is his last album at th...

Pursuing international investmentLITTLE ROCK — Last week, I returned from what is likely to be my last international trade mission as governor of Arkansas. The journey to three European countries showcased the full range of all that can be gained through in-person contact with current and potential international investors. My team and I met with long-time partners we hope will further expand their presence in Arkansas. We met with companies we hoped to attract to our state, a...